Who Rings The Black Funeral Bell
by TrisakAminawn
Summary: You choose your path, walk down it, and waste no time on hesitation or regret. But Wolfwood is beginning to doubt some of the steps on his path of betrayal. Can truth protect better than lies? And will Vash forgive him, even if it does? [Gen, no pairing.]
1. Dubito Ergo Cogito

**Who Rings The Black Funeral Bell**

Toll One: 'Dubito Ergo Cogito:_ A Strenuous Life with Its Eyes Shut Is a Kind of Wild Insanity.'_

TrisakAminawn, 5/30/11; edited version posted 7/3/13

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><p>Long Author's Note on the placement in canon etc. follows at foot of chapter. You can skip it no harm, because I made sure the necessary context is provided in-text, but if you like to know exactly what's going on, feel free to scroll down.<p>

I hereby formally recognize that I own nothing, and none of you are allowed to pay me for this. (Hahah.) Nightow and Madhouse, and probably Shounen Gahousha, have the rights to the planet herein depicted and its inhabitants. Also, thanks to my beta, SirGawainofCamelot. (And shoutout that you totally failed to notice I'd typoed our hero into Vash the _Stamped_. And Duly Addressed, one must assume.)

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><p>He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. ~William Drummond, <em>Academical Questions<em>

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><p>Since they'd rescued Lina from the Stampede impersonator, gotten Vash his symbolic haircut, and blown town before people could get used to the idea that their Eriks was the real Stampede, and decide whether that merited a lynching, Wolfwood and Vash had been traveling together for nine days.<p>

In the course of which Vash had managed to: be assaulted by an insurance agent, meet up with whoever it was who'd replaced his left arm and red coat without Wolfwood managing to get a look at them, get himself mixed up in someone else's feud, and be thrown in jail and require rescue. The jailbreak accomplished, they'd taken Wolfwood's latest bike across the open desert, heading toward the empty town of Tomin and the crimson signature of _Knives_. They'd ridden, so far, as if the hounds of Hell were behind them (instead of before), as if they might be late to the end of the world (even though Wolfwood's gut told him that it would wait for them to arrive).

(He had no idea what Vash thought.)

The sun had crossed the sky and fallen, and risen, and fallen again without their pausing, before Wolfwood found that _he_ seemed likely to join Vash in falling off the bike soon, and called a halt for the rest of the night, in the lee of the largest rock they'd seen for iles. This was dune country, out here, flat and endless. Some people said the dunelands were the buried bed of an ancient sea, when Gunsmoke had been a richer world thousands of years ago, long before men were stranded here with the tomas and the sandworms. Wolfwood thought that was romantic idiocy even if it was true.

They'd scratched out a bit of a camp, lit a low fire out of mostly tomas dung and old bones, for company more than for warmth, and now they were sitting on either side of it, Vash with his back against the lonely rock, Wolfwood on top of his roll of blanket with his cross at his back and Angelina II drawn up as a paltry sort of windbreak, letting the desert stretch out behind him. Both of them utterly exhausted, but equally unwilling to lie down and try to rest. Perhaps Vash, too, was avoiding dreams.

Wolfwood poked at the fire with his toe, took a drag at his cigarette, and left it where it was, his hand drifting down to land in his lap. He was so tired.

Wasn't like him to be getting dopey like this, after less than three days without sleep.

Wolfwood blamed it on old age, and then very nearly laughed at himself. Yeah, he felt old. He felt like he'd lived through a hundred years. He looked, at the very least, like an established adult. Nearly thirty.

Last month, he'd made it to the ripe old age of eighteen.

And you, he thought, looking across the fire at drowsy Vash, curled up kitten-harmless against the stone, you really are old. I've met your twin, and I've done my digging while you were hiding from yourself; you've _really_ been in this sandy hellhole for a hundred years. A hundred and more. And if you knew what year I was born, you'd think I was a kid, even though that's wrong by everything but the numbers and you know me too well for it to make sense. So why am I the old one? He drew in a large lungful of smoke, feeling the cool burn of the nicotine hit and barely cut through the fatigue at all, and stared into the red heart of the fire.

Wolfwood had been abandoned soon after birth. He'd become a laboratory experiment when he was barely eleven.

Before he'd turned thirteen, he'd been an accomplished killer.

By fifteen, he had discovered a mission of his own: he believed Millions Knives could actually kill everyone in the world, and he meant to find the chance to kill him first. He'd shot Master C a week later. Stepped into his shoes. Taken up smoking, because his body literally wasn't going to last long enough for the cigarettes to do their damage, and he should take advantage where he could, right?

At sixteen, he had reencountered hope.

It wore a red coat and sometimes made him so angry he couldn't see straight. It was his magnificently backwards target, someone he had to keep safe on the malicious orders of someone he meant to destroy. It was, by now, his best friend.

That had crept up on him, even if it had probably been inevitable. Wolfwood considered himself an ordinary man. He got along with people; he wasn't one of the freaks who came out of the lab cold-faced and maladjusted, or one of the ones who let doubts about their own natures distract them from thinking about their _lives_. He laughed, he drank, he gambled, he fought, he plotted, he performed funerals and the occasional marriage, he sent money to the old orphanage. He killed people. He hadn't had any _friends_ since crybaby Livio.

But he was pretty sure he would die for Vash without giving himself time to hesitate.

He wasn't sure that he shouldn't just kill the man now.

Wolfwood knew exactly what Vash was. Or close enough to exactly. Well, no, he had no _idea_, not really, but he knew better than anyone else Vash had met since the Fall what he was, and what he could do, if he tried. He knew exactly how stupid Vash was, and had some idea how much of that stupidity was willful. He had no idea what to make of him. How did he do it? How did he survive all those years with even that painful fake smile, let alone the real one Wolfwood had seen every few days at least, the first time they'd traveled together, and from time to time even now? How did he keep making Wolfwood want to hope for things he'd given up on a lifetime ago?

He looked out into the darkness, and he thought: It doesn't take God for a miracle, people say. I don't know if I even believe in miracles. Not here, at least. Not on this awful planet. But occasionally there are amazing things. _You_ make amazing things happen. You break the rules like nobody else in history, and sometimes you make me believe in your dream world, even though I know better. Even though I learned years ago the difference between wanting and doing. Somehow you and the big girl always do everything I can't. As if it's easy.

And even you ran away. You've always been running away, really. You're such a coward, Tongari. In this world, people can't be perfect. We're not gods. Even you. We can't save everyone. And some of us have to become devils, in order to save even a few of the rest. I've walked forward believing that for my whole life. You stand there, fighting without killing and saying with your whole body, with your whole _soul_ that I made the wrong choice. How can you say that? Don't you know no one else is like you?

Don't you know we're just human?

…How have you survived all this time?

And how could I ever have dragged you back out into this world of death and gunpowder? I'm so…_sorry_, Vash.

I am. Because you were _right_ to run. The pain is never going to stop. Pain I guess you've been dealing with for longer than anybody else, but pain your brother is going to keep sending more of, and more, battering you down. (Like he sent me, like he sent the message of the empty towns. He won't let you run any more. Would you still come with me, if you knew I belonged to him?)

Pain that may break you, any time now, no matter how strong you are, and double the threat against humanity until we aren't even the memory of dust on this seared world.

We've hurt you so badly without his even needing to encourage us.

And I am still almost sure you would try to stop me from killing that brother of yours if the two of us were the only things between him and a switch that would set off the slaughter of every human on Gunsmoke, because you would still want to find a way of saving him, _too_. That is beyond stupid. That is _insane_. Sometimes there have to be sacrifices. You must know what he is. I don't know what happened between you, but you have to know what he is. He's the monster, the demon to the saint you play at being. I heard about what you said to the girls in Inepril, before we met. The oath of forever August almost made you give up. Why are you looking for him? What do you plan to do?

I want to see. And it's my job to get you there in one piece, at the right time.

It's my job. I'm doing my job, until the moment I get the chance to put a bullet in his head.

I couldn't do it after the Fifth Moon. He smiled right at me and said,_ keep to your contract, find him and guard him and bring him safe to the end_, knowing I could not pull that trigger, knowing he was too fucking powerful…but the time will come.

Legato has to be away or dead by that moment. Millions Knives has to be distracted. I'm actually counting on Vash for that, and I hate myself for it, but I'll take advantage and shoot his brother before his eyes anyway, just like all the other people I've killed and all the lies I've told.

Does it matter, what he'd think of that? If I can save everyone that way?

Wolfwood's eyes cut away, then, from the dark empty desert, to flash over Vash, who was drowsing against his rock with his mouth half-open, looking more like an angelic child than a gunman. And darted back into the darkness.

And he thought: Ever since that first day, you've understood, the way no one else ever did, because no one else but the two of us walks always through the smell of blood and gunpowder and still dives off moving buses to rescue little girls. Fighting together we are stronger than armies. We've laughed and meant it. We've saved people I wouldn't have been able to save if it had been just me. We've gotten drunk and teased the girls and saved each other's lives. You fall off the bike and get us into trouble and I have to spring you from jail, and I pour hot sauce on the wounds of insurance hitmen who try to kill you.

Honestly. Speaking as a professional, that was a terrible assassination attempt. Meryl probably led them to underestimate you.

Way to go, short girl. Big girl, too; I recognized that low barrel report and those impact wounds. Miss you both, somehow. Better off without us, though.

I'll bring him back to you. If I can. When this is all over, if I've killed Knives, if, hah, we're both still alive, I think that's what I'll do. I'll bring Vash to you, and see if you can fix him. He won't want to look at me. I'll have betrayed him. Knives will make sure to tell him that all along I was following orders. I don't know what they're plotting. I never have. The Guns weren't really formed to kill Vash. They weren't really killed for failing. It's all a dumb show, meant to break him, and break him they very nearly did.

I know it wasn't Rai-dei's fault, what happened; he didn't have the power to make Vash use whatever put that hole in the moon, but he'd earned death a hundred ways before he ever met the Humanoid Typhoon, and killing him would have relieved my feelings even if it hadn't been my orders, and even if the dumb shit hadn't been expecting me to work with him to put Vash down like a mad mutant dog. As if _he_ was the monster. As if anyone could kill him against his will.

If we'd found him then, though, and I'd tried to kill him, I know he would have _let_ me.

It makes me angry.

He deserves better than that. And he shouldn't let the world get away with the crap it pulls. He should have killed Knives a hundred years ago, when whatever happened, happened.

He's my pal. That much isn't complicated. I want to protect him. I can't even stop hurting him.

Wolfwood closed his eyes against sudden pain. He was aware that at some point his thoughts had jolted a little out of their familiar circles, but he didn't stop the thought that came louder than usual in the reddish darkness of eyelids closed against fire: _What if I'm wrong?_

What if he couldn't kill Knives this way? It wasn't as if the maniac didn't know_ just _what he was planning to do with his position. It wasn't as if Wolfwood weren't _sure_ they were using him in the first place. What if being Chapel was useless now, and he would be better off just Wolfwood, and…but always the kids. He couldn't betray them as long as the organization kept its power, because they had the kids back home hostage. And even if he snuck those kids out and hid them successfully, which he doubted he could do even alone, and no way if he brought accident-prone Vash along, even then the rest of the Guns could butcher some other kids and know it would half-kill him to know they'd done it. All the children in the world were hostage, because he hadn't hidden his own weaknesses well enough.

Love was definitely a weakness, in an assassin. But he would never have survived this long without it, without the kids keeping his soul from being shivered completely and blowing away on the desert wind. So he understood about Vash, and he'd never tell him to stop caring because even if loving the whole world seemed like seven distinct kinds of suicide it made him Vash.

He cared about Wolfwood. It was going to be another nail in his coffin when they told him the truth.

What if this didn't work? What was he going to say if this didn't work? If he'd done all this to his best friend, Saint of Stupidity Vash the Stampede, for nothing, what was he going to say if he came up in front of some celestial court after the genocide conspiracy slaughtered him, and the court wanted to know why he'd done such a thing? And more important, what could he possibly say to Vash?

Wolfwood thought: Why hasn't he asked?

Vash had never told him about Knives. Wolfwood had no acceptable reason to_ know_ about Knives or his connection to Vash. But here they were, driving to see about the empty town signed _Knives_, which he'd called a man's name when it was more obviously a word for cutting implements. And Vash hadn't asked. He must have guessed some of it. He didn't want to know. He knew he couldn't take whatever the truth was, because if it were innocent Wolfwood would already have told him.

Vash didn't want to know. And that just made Wolfwood angrier, angrier than anything except the way Vash kept not _getting_ it about killing, because that was him all over, that running and hiding, that vein of _cowardice_ that seemed to run to the very heart of the bravest man he'd ever known, and he hated that. Hated that Vash couldn't bring himself to do what was necessary, even for the love that defined him. Hated that he couldn't rely on Vash all that much more than Vash could rely on him, and him a knowing traitor.

Snake in the grass. He turned the term over his head a few times. He'd seen grass sometimes, in geo-plants, although most geo-plant space was dedicated to productive agriculture, but snakes had not made it to Gunsmoke, so he'd never seen one. He imagined they were like very small sandworms, and he _felt_ like a very small sandworm sometimes.

He'd heard that one of the Guns could control sandworms, or was controlled by sandworms, or something. It had been a very vague rumor. It was obviously about the Beast, though.

Vash wanted to control him. That had gotten under his skin since forever, really. Of course, Vash's evil twin and cadre wanted to control him, too, and were fairly smugly secure they did. But the parts of him _they_ claimed and controlled were things he had given up owning years ago. Things the Eye of Michael had taken away from him along with his orphan's remainder of innocence and even the remotest chance of living to see forty. Losses he was resigned to.

What Vash wanted to own was his soul.

It was ugly and tattered but it was still his, and he'd preserved it like grim death through years of training, of killing, of accepting commands. And if he had ever given his loyalty to Vash, if he'd said, beyond his already given 'nobody does that to my buddy'_—screw the past, I'm your brother now_ or _count on me_, if he'd gone from wild half-spoken friendship to something sworn, then he would have been expected to act on it in another way than taking care of Vash. The free plant would want to take away the only choice that had been left to him.

The right to decide when someone had to die.

He would not give his soul away even to Vash. He would not be owned where he could help it. He would not change one master for another. If he were ever to foreswear the Eye and Knives and his dark and bloody life, with them would go all he was and had been, all he'd managed to carve out, all his freedoms and choices. And he was his own man, for all he was twisted by one and hired by the other and could not separate himself, or shake away the commands. He had taken his career in the Eye into his own hands and used them to get close to Knives, whom he only obeyed so he could kill him. Whatever they believed, they did not own Wolfwood. At the heart of it all, he was his own.

And if he gave up all that shadow and blood and the strength of secrecy, he would belong to Vash.

No wonder Vash didn't ask him how he knew what he knew.

If this had been before August and the Fifth Moon, Wolfwood reflected, he wouldn't have had to blame the not-asking, the intentional not-knowing, on cowardice. Vash would have not-asked with a knowing smile, and it would have been because even though he knew there was a secret, he trusted Wolfwood. Even now, when he teased that Wolfwood kept things from him and fair was fair, he was _trusting_ that those were secrets safe enough to leave. Or that Wolfwood had at least a good reason for keeping them. No one had ever trusted Wolfwood before.

Untrue. The younger children at the orphanage had trusted him. Some children still trusted him, from time to time. No other _adult_ had ever trusted Wolfwood.

Never been much opportunity, had there? He was only eighteen.

And anyway, Vash was _not_ an adult.

Though he wasn't a child, either, not really, not at all, though it might make things simpler if he had been. Because how could Wolfwood betray a child?

He told himself: You know you would. One child for a hundred children, for the tens of thousands all over the planet. You'd sacrifice him if he were the baby Jesus himself, if you had to. That's the way you've always lived. Make the hard choice, Nicholas, because no one can do it for you.

Sacrificing Vash, if I have to do it (I have already done it, twice at least) may be the hardest choice I have ever made. I can still do it.

_I don't want to!_

And Wolfwood thought: When has it mattered what I wanted?

And Wolfwood thought: Always. Remember the first time I was shot, when I was still a kid, and learned I _wanted_ to live? I _want_ to protect all the children. I _want_ to see Millions Knives dead. I _want_ Vash to be happy.

Which the hell of those is the _most_ impossible?

And Wolfwood thought: I know who's good at impossible things. I know he can't help me with the last of them, and I suspect he won't with the second, despite demonstrated need, but the kids. He understands about kids.

And he knows about secrets. (Incredibly.) He wouldn't give away anything that would get a child killed.

If I tell him one thing, I'll have to tell it all, won't I?

Maybe not. Maybe if I give up on being forgiven, because that's not the point anyway, and I just tell him what I think he has to know, if I don't explain myself, if I don't apologize, if I don't promise anything. He'll have to let me stay with him for the sake of the children, and not let his brother know that he knows, and maybe the more information he has the more likely he'll find one of his impossible solutions, because steering him hasn't been good enough so far. And maybe the two of us can win this, if we start actually working together.

And he thought: Will Vash be _able_ to work with me once it's all out in the open? He's not trained to operate with people he hates. He does it all from the heart.

He really didn't know. Vash forgave people, or he destroyed them. Sure, they all made it out alive, but the unforgiven were eviscerated one way or another once he'd gone at them with prejudice. Wolfwood had never seen a middle ground. And either way, he went away afterward and left them to live their lives. Wolfwood only had himself and the girls as reference pool for Vash and long-term relationships, which did indicate that Vash got around his compulsion to shake people off and run for the hills, whenever they got too close, by not thinking about it.

This was going to demand thinking. Lord of Hosts, pass him a kind remembrance.

You couldn't hesitate forever.

Wolfwood took a breath and raised his chin. An inch of accumulated ash dropped off his cigarette, and the end flared, and bit burning into his lip, it had grown so short while he sat thinking. He spat the butt out, swearing, and rubbed at his mouth. It was a tiny wound. It would be gone in a few minutes. Wolfwood turned to the Humanoid Typhoon.

Vash had woken up again, maybe at the cursing but he thought somewhat earlier, and was returning his look with the smooth face and deep, open eyes that Wolfwood hadn't seen since before the Fifth Moon, since Vash's heart had broken again, since he had dragged the Stampede out of his hidey-hole and made him face the universe. This was the Vash he'd missed most, even more than his drinking buddy and fighting partner, the Vash he'd thought might be dead, the Vash he was most ashamed in front of. He held his breath, expecting his friend, his victim, to blink and send it away again and bring out one of his false faces, or remember his own shame.

"Hey, Tongari," he said quietly, casually, delicately, hoping against hope not to shatter the moment and his own resolve.

This would change everything. It would destroy all his plans and risk everything he'd been protecting, and probably lose him his best friend. But his plans _weren't going to work_, and he wouldn't be able to take care of Vash through a lie forever. And at least this way, he decided when it happened. It had always been going to happen. He wasn't a coward, like Vash. And he wasn't kind.

Wolfwood thought: I will take care of you kids. No matter what it costs, I won't let you pay for this. I _am not sacrificing you for him_.

All he was sacrificing was secrecy. No matter what. They would never have to pay for his choices.

"Hm?" said Vash. He smiled a little, a very little. Distant as lost Earth, he was, and looking right through Wolfwood as if he already knew everything, understood everything, and so obviously fragile, and hardly looking like an idiot at all. What Wolfwood had to say was going to mess him up all over again. But he had to find out some time. And if he told him now, it wouldn't get him killed when someone told him in the middle of battle: Oh, yes, Wolfwood, Nicholas D. You mean Chapel, don't you? He kept such a good eye on you for us.

Wolfwood licked the shrinking blister on his lower lip. Telling Vash now was taking a weapon from the enemy. The Humanoid Typhoon was so young and so old, and such a fool, and so torn up inside, and Wolfwood had seen enough to know that he was going to die some really stupid way sooner or later, but it shouldn't be _that_ way, on the prongs of Wolfwood's lies. And he was still a legend for a reason. He only had to screw up once for it to end forever…but so far, Vash the Stampede could get out of the worst situations imaginable.

Time to show him a few more bars of the cage.

The priest shook another cigarette into his hand, and held it into the fire to light. When it smoldered, he raised it, drew in a mouthful of smoke, and sat back to look at Vash, blowing out a silver-grey stream. "I think," he said, even as his nerve failed, "I'd better tell you some things."

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><p>"It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment." ~Cicero.<p>

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><p>The promised contextcanon **Note**: This story follows a mixed canon. Manga backstories for everybody, because they're just that much better. Anime storyline up through the Fifth Moon incident, because it flows better and there's more of it. And everyone knows it better. Trigun Maximum version of reality afterward, except on the crucial point that in the anime Vash **doesn't** ask Wolfwood who he really is, or how he knows stuff like Knives' name, whereas in chapter two of Maximum he does, and Wolfwood blows him off grandly, and again in chapter eight. In our story, he hasn't outright asked.

This is set to happen pretty much instead of the manga fight with Rai-dei, who in this mixed canon is already dead, and thus unavailable for combat. Wolfwood kills him both times, but in the manga it's right in front of Vash, to protect him, prompting an epic blowout and my single favorite panel of Trigun. (Which is now the story image.) They don't really come to much of a resolution.

In _this _continuity, Wolfwood shot Rai-dei in the ruins of August, as in the anime, and Vash doesn't know about it. And of course, if Wolfwood actually goes through with explaining himself to Vash, we'll be wading into an AU.

For anime-only fans who read _Bell _anyway, the only important difference you might be missing is that manga!Wolfwood was an experimental subject in developing the Eye of Michael's enhancement treatments, which yield a body that both heals and ages at an accelerated rate.

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><p>So that's the end of chapter one. Wolfwood has finished thinking. Chapter two is almost ready to post, and if I get some decent feedback I'll put it up fairly soon. Review?<p> 


	2. Our Only Real Weapon

**Who Rings The Black Funeral Bell**

Toll Two: Our Only Real Weapon: _When People Are Laughing, They Are Generally Not Killing Each Other._

TrisakAminawn, 8/09/11; edited version posted 7/16/13

Nightow supplied Wolfwood's full name in an interview. I did not make it up. No, he wasn't serious, but he _said_ it.

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><p>"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter." ~Friedrich Nietzsche<p>

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><p>Wolfwood started a new cigarette in the fire, dragged a breath through it, and raised his head to look Vash right in the eye. "I think," he said, slowly, "I'd better tell you some things."<p>

"What things?" asked Vash, rather unwillingly. He had not missed the tension around Wolfwood, that had curdled the cool night air into some weighty, invisible form of the wreaths of smoke that billowed around him. However light his tone, however nonchalant that remark, it was the product of a _decision_.

Wolfwood's cigarette twitched to one side between his lips, and he slouched back against the white cross he had nested in the sand, tossing a careless open hand out to the side. Arched his eyebrows."Valetinez Alkalanela Zeehok Sushira Boheres Gombigonela Blue Stradavari Tralentent Pierre Andre Charlatenhemost I'vanovitchi Baldos George Doitzel Kaiser the Third," he reeled off, straight-faced.

Vash blinked. "What?"

Wolfwood grinned one half of a grin. "That's the name you told me on the bus, when we first met. To piss me off, far as I can tell."

"Well, you stole my water!" protested Vash, defensively. He had no idea where the joke was coming from after that heavy atmosphere, but he could play his part with some relief. It looked like the decision had been to put it off, whatever it was. They could both just…not think about it, for a little while at least.

"I did?" asked Wolfwood, raising his eyebrows in every evidence of surprise.

"How can you remember a crazy made-up name and forget that?" He'd started the list of names back then meaning to make the initials spell out 'Vash the Stampede,' an acronym or acrostic composition or something, but decided against it after 'A,' partly out of caution and partly because he wanted to say 'Zeehok,' and there was no Z in his name. All huge names like that should end in a number. Made them feel finished, somehow. "Yes, you stole my water. _All_ my water."

"Sorry," said Wolfwood, sounding exactly as sorry as he had the time he almost ran Vash down with the bike—which _was_ sorrier than he'd sounded at the time of the theft, Vash supposed, if the space between gloating and indifferent counted as much improvement for you. "I could actually have done you one better at the time, because this name is actually real, but I didn't. I think we know each other well enough now, though…You know the D in my name?" Wolfwood never left it out. Plain 'Nicholas Wolfwood' would sound sad and orphaned. Vash nodded. Wolfwood sucked on his cigarette, took it out between two fingers, blew out a cloud of smoke that mixed with the thin stream rising from the campfire, gave a nod. "Get ready for this: it stands for…Dokonokuminomonja waresumakinishiteshizume tarokakora."

Vash gaped. "No way!" And then a grin broke over his face, and he laughed. "No _way_!"

"God's own truth."

Vash laughed again, and then was not sure he could stop laughing because unless Wolfwood had gotten to be a much better liar recently it actually _was_ actually true. "That's—say it again," he got out. His face hurt. When had he last laughed like this? At something Lina had done, he guessed, months ago, before Fake Vash had come to town but after he'd settled in and realized he could be happy there. And even then it hadn't been quite like _this_, though rationally he knew it was only so funny because he'd been so afraid of what Wolfwood might be about to say.

Wolfwood obligingly repeated, "Dokonoku, minomonja, ware sumaki nishite shizume tarokakora."

Vash burst out all over again. "That's…huge! Too big for birth certificates! It's much bigger than if we put the rest of your name and my name together!"

Wolfwood raised his eyebrows at him. "_Your_ name is four letters long."

"I was counting 'the Stampede,'" Vash explained, and went back to laughing, a little more quietly. "Dokunokuminomonja…" he muttered, and gave up. A few more cackles, prolonged by the sight of Wolfwood's expression, trying to be impatient and longsuffering but with a smile continually pulling at the corner of his mouth, and then the hilarity began to ease, and Vash picked himself up from where he'd slid in the throes of mirth and put his back against the stone again, still chuckling a little.

"I've got," said Wolfwood with worrying calm, turning his cigarette between his fingers and watching it as if a burning-out cigarette was fascinating, both hands looking wholly relaxed, as if this remark were completely off the cuff, when Vash could tell very well that it was not, and his breath caught, "another name you might find interesting."

Vash realized he might be supposed to ask 'what,' but by the time he decided to do so it was too late.

And Wolfwood had continued, "Gung Ho Guns Eight: Chapel the Evergreen."

Vash didn't quite hear it at first.

He'd known Wolfwood was hiding something, and now brooding about something, he'd known there were secrets and they might be bad, he'd thought he might tell him something big now, but. But. He hadn't expected this. Never this. Denial caught up with shock and whited the sound of the words right out of his head for an instant, and then he was scrabbling to his feet, grateful for the solid stone against his back, his hand closing pointlessly on empty air a few times before he managed to get it into his pocket and close it on his gun.

But this was _Wolfwood_. He'd shot at Wolfwood before, yes, but never to hurt him. This was _Wolfwood._

Gung Ho Guns Eight. Chapel the Evergreen.

"But…but…_why?_" he managed to ask, and it was everything from 'why would you work for Knives' to 'why have you been helping me' to 'why are you telling me now,' but mostly it was '_how can this be true?_' He pulled his gun out of his pocket. His hand was shaking.

It had shaken in August, too. He'd thought he was a better gunman than that. Couldn't have shaky hands. Maybe he should lay off the whiskey.

"Knives ordered me to make contact," answered what he'd thought was his best friend, even when, maybe especially when, he pried him away from newfound home and family by reminding him of responsibilities out in the world. Wolfwood knew him better than anyone, better than Doc even in a lot of ways because they lived in the same world of sand and bullets that Doc only ever visited. Had known him better than Meryl almost the day they met. He missed her desperately for the first time in a long while, missed her willingness to believe exactly what she saw and her sharp voice and her silly pink suitcase. She hadn't believed he was himself for weeks and weeks, not until it was forced on her. Wolfwood had understood right away. And now he knew why. Now he knew.

_Knives_ had sent him. Wolfwood had _known_ all along.

"Then he ordered me to take care of you." The priest was just sitting there. His cigarette had gone out, but he was still holding it in his right hand, his left open palm-up on the ground beside him, both of them nowhere near his weapons; his legs folded, meaning that extra fraction of a second to get up and dangerous. Not that Wolfwood wouldn't be dangerous empty-handed and prone.

Take care. Take care of. That phrase. That phrase. Could it be a coincidence? He was supposed to take care of Knives. He let his gun drift up, so it was pointed very near Wolfwood, and even if it wouldn't quite stop shaking he would still hit at this range, even as good at dodging as the priest always had been. "No," clarified his faraway voice, which didn't want to hear why Wolfwood had stuck by him starting so suddenly, why he had fought beside him, why any of their time together when maybe it could just stay the same memories it had been, if he didn't ask. But he couldn't not ask. "Why be…Chapel?"

Wolfwood said, "To kill your brother."

Vash's hand stopped shaking. He thought he might be going to collapse instead. He shifted his grip, which still felt milky-weak, but which he knew could still dent steel if he needed it to. The weapon he held clinked, all business. No emotions there. "You know he's my brother, then," he heard himself say, distant and icy. Kept his eyes on Wolfwood. Didn't let himself focus too closely on his face, his expressions. Took in his body language, posture, the angle of that one hand poised with its cigarette, and watched for any motion toward that great white engine of death propped so casually behind him. "What else do you know?"

Wolfwood was still absolutely still. "I know what the two of you are. I know what Knives wants for the world. I know you haven't stopped him, but I don't know why."

"Because I can't find him!" exploded Vash. His hand rock steady, keeping the revolver perfectly on target. "Because he's scary! Because he's been lying low, been doing I don't know _what_ all these years and I haven't been able to find him!" He was crying. Of course he was crying. What was amazing was that he hadn't started earlier.

Wolfwood started to get up, and Vash fired into the sand beside his leg. The sound of the shot reverberated across the empty desert, and found nothing to send echoes of it back. "Five shots left," Vash said. Eyes still crying. Voice of steel. "What I want to know is how a priest like you became part of this."

Wolfwood had subsided after the shot. Slowly, and without looking away from Vash, he brought his cigarette to his mouth, tried to smoke it, discovered it was out. Grimaced, threw it away. "Well, I'm not a real priest," he said. He considered. "Or maybe I am. I'm not sure anymore. I guess I _was_ ordained. The people who took me out of the orphanage were a proper church on the books. Tax-exempt and everything." He snorted. "The Eye of Michael. They're assassins."

He tipped his head so he could look at Vash a little sidelong, almost sardonic, expressionless. "Hired killers, you know. The organization fills three spots continuously in the Guns. Knives finds it handy because we're professional, don't come with any messy private motivations for following him, and more importantly if we're killed there's no need for a recruitment drive to refill the ranks, so he has a reliable source of subordinates unless the order is actually decimated, which hasn't happened. And probably won't. Too damn strong." There was a casual arrogance to the way he said that, no hint of either pride or bitterness at the strength of his organization. Merely an utter flat confidence that his comrades would be there to replace him if he died, no matter when he did it.

Vash swallowed. He was so angry. The cold still place in his head that was in charge of aiming and other zero-sum calculations mulled it over. Wolfwood, the traveling preacher, was a professional killer. He murdered people for money. Presumably he was _good_ at it, since you could get lots of people to try to kill people by offering them money for it, but 'assassin' implied some real skill and reliability. And didn't Wolfwood have those?

But he didn't choose it, said his heart, finding a voice again from inside crying. They _took_ him. He isn't working for Knives to kill everyone. He might not even mean to kill me.

And he's still Wolfwood. I bet it all goes back to children somehow.

He _is_ still Wolfwood, right?

"And why are you telling me?" he demanded. "Why _now_?"

Wolfwood's impassive face flickered. For a moment, there was something in those flat black eyes again. "Because we need to work together, to get to Knives. Leading you by the nose is just going to keep playing into his plans." Vash swallowed again. It was strangely difficult. Wolfwood looked away. "And because you were going to find out someday anyway, and better if it was from me, now, when no one's trying to shoot you."

He sniffed sharply, apparently in disgust with himself, and looked up at Vash, a serious expression drawn across his face, and his eyes…something. Not quite blank. Not the animation he was used to, but it was something. Pleading, maybe, or challenge. Or both. "Spike, listen. If they find out I've given the game away, they'll kill the kids at the orphanage. Or some other kids. Lots of kids. They know I'm not loyal, so they've made that clear since Knives first sent me to find you. I can't stop them any way but doing like I'm told, and I just stopped doing that, so it's up to you."

Wolfwood was using the children being held hostage for his good behavior as hostages to make Vash pretend this had never happened.

That was the stupidest, most twisted brilliant scheme he had ever….

He fired into the ground beside Wolfwood's other foot, a fraction of an inch away, sent up a spray of sand that looked golden in the combined light of fire and moon. Lowered his gun.

"That's not fair, Wolfwood," he said steadily. Wolfwood was just looking at him. Waiting.

Vash, slowly, sat back down. His spot was no longer comfortable. Vash stared into the dying fire for long enough that he lost count of his own breaths, and then asked, "What did you mean, Knives told you to take care of me?"

Wolfwood shrugged. He hadn't started another cigarette. It was actually odd to see, him sitting there doing nothing with his hands, without a white cylinder burning down and wrapping him in smoke. It helped him look like a different person, like someone other than the violent priest Vash had been convincing not to kill over so many months now. Like Nicholas Wolfwood, the assassin. Like Chapel the Evergreen. If Chapel was someone more distant and silent and somehow more vulnerable than Wolfwood. Trying to look untouchable. Shrugging. "Just that. It was my mission, to stop the other Gung Ho Guns from actually managing to really hurt you, on the off chance you slipped up. They weren't really to kill you, though I think Legato hoped they would."

The priest tipped one half-closed hand a little from the elbow, opening the palm a little further to the sky. It was a gesture that would have had more of character and less of feeling in it if he'd been holding the customary cigarette. "They're…we're meant to…break your heart. The Gale tearing through that town, Dominique appearing near a pile of corpses, and then hanging both of their bodies where you would see, and even Rai-dei taking Mine out before challenging you—it was all staged. They didn't know. No one _tells_ these things to the pawns. But that's got to be the scheme. I don't know if the plans call for telling you about me before or after I'm killed. Maybe at the time. But that's why. Why all of it. Your brother wants you to suffer, but he doesn't want you to die." He shrugged again. "Or maybe he wants to kill you himself, but if so I'd think he'd have come after you by now. Don't you?"

"I don't know," said Vash. He never knew, anymore, with Knives.

Seeing Vash now, the closed-off pain and anger in the face that had trusted him so very recently, Wolfwood's heart hurt the way it did whenever he saw dead children, getting its revenge on him for letting this thing-that-should-not-happen, happen. He'd shared the joke of his weird middle name as much out of cowardice, as much out of wanting to make Vash laugh and to see him be happy because of Wolfwood one last time, as strategically, to make sure he knew what frame of mind he was dropping his bomb into. And breaking into the end of that laughter with hideous truth had half-killed him, but in a way that fact had made it easier to do, because it had reminded him how little he wanted Vash to know what he was, how little he wanted to lose the friendship they'd put together. That this wasn't selfish, because he didn't _want_ to do it. So it was okay for him to do.

But it wasn't okay, was it? Just look at the guy. He'd promised himself he wouldn't ask Vash to forgive him—he couldn't really expect it; even if it was Vash things would never be the same again, and anyway he had his dignity—but how was he supposed to make him feel better when _he_ was the problem? And an enemy, no less. And still _mad_ at the damn plant.

"Tongari," he said, his voice coming out rough.

Vash closed his eyes tight. "Wolfwood," he said. He was still holding his gun, but it was just lying in the sand, his hand slack as if he had almost forgotten it but couldn't bear to put it away.

Wolfwood groped for words. They were stuck with each other for now, maybe for a long time if Vash was willing to keep up the pretense for the children but especially now, with nothing but their baggage, the fire, his bike, the rock, and the great empty desert for company. There was no need to say anything. They should probably just be quiet, letting the truth sink in. He would have been, if he could have, but staying silent to that face had been impossible, and Vash had said his name more like a request to keep talking than like finality. Vash wanted him to talk. Now he had to say something.

There were things he could say. Things that might help. But they might just make Vash hate him more, and that they could not afford. He should never have given himself away. "You understand I'll still watch your back," he said at last, abruptly. "When we're under fire. We can fight the same as—" _as always_ "—before."

"And you'll go on aiming not to kill, Wolfwood?" asked Vash wearily, from behind closed eyes. Wolfwood found himself dumb. Vash opened his eyes and, in the way they only did when things were really bad, they looked over a hundred years old. Vash's smile didn't quite hit cynical, but it was certainly bitter, maybe dismissive, and so, so tired. "What's the point?"

"You've made me want to change!" Wolfwood snarled before he thought to stop himself, and then thought perhaps it had been a good thing, because Vash was staring at him, and in his surprise he looked again younger than a century. The priest let himself go on. "You drive me insane with your muleheaded spiky-ness, but you've made me think…practically since the beginning you've made me wish you were right. That everybody was worth saving, and we could do it without losing a lot of people who deserve to live, trying. That I could step off this road I've been walking my whole life. There have to be sacrifices sometimes, Vash," he said harshly, looking his friend in the face so he wouldn't be misunderstood, "I still believe that. But I wish to God it wasn't true."

"And you're one of the sacrifices, Nicholas?" Vash asked him, unexpectedly, out of that same still face with its tiny smile, with those faraway eyes suddenly looking like they thought they understood. There were still tear tracks on his cheeks.

"No," Wolfwood snapped, looking away. "Not me. I'm just…Nicholas the Punisher, but you should call me Wolfwood." He groped across the sand a little and came up with the nearly-fresh cigarette he'd thrown away earlier. Looked at it. He honestly didn't really want a smoke right now, but it would probably do his nerves good anyway.

He looked up, steely again. "Not me, not yet anyway. But _if_ it would take killing me to teach you to take down people who get in your way, if you could start doing that when you needed to, starting with me, that'd be fine." For the first time that night, he reached one hand back toward his Cross Punisher, where it lay in the sand behind him, and the atmosphere slammed tight with enmity and the promise of singing lead and blood on the sand. "Want to go?"

Vash's hand tightened on his gun, but he didn't raise it, and Wolfwood didn't actually touch his weapon. "That's not," said Vash through his teeth, "what I meant at all."

Wolfwood sighed. The reaching hand went back to turning over the stifled cigarette, and he watched it turning instead of looking at Vash. The humming tension went out of the thin desert air, and the silence around their words was more ordinary again. "I know." He'd been telling the truth, though. On the one hand, a Vash who'd learned to kill wouldn't quite be Vash anymore, but on the other, he would be able to defeat anything. Survive. Save the world. That was worth Wolfwood's life in a heartbeat. Cheap at the price.

Time and again he'd thought of death as a friend, coming to meet him at a dead run but still not fast enough. When he'd been hungry, when he'd been bound and burning under the knife, when he'd felt the blood building up on his hands. Always known better than to run too fast himself to meet her, because there was so much to do and so little time, so very little time to save so many people, and even on this awful world there were so many things to live for, but…yeah, if Vash made it worth his while he'd jump into her cold arms in a minute. Death was a lady, he'd fancied once, and anyway the blood and the pain and all the grotesque attitudes in which the bodies lay weren't her fault. She came to end it.

It was people like him who caused the suffering.

He wanted to fight Vash, in the way you wanted to ride out a sandstorm that could scour you to bones, or to throw yourself from a cliff when you stood at the edge looking down. Wanted to test him again. Wanted to hammer the stupidity out of him. He didn't _think_ he really wanted to kill him.

Despite knowing the power he'd used to destroy July and August.

He thought: God, Spiky. All that power. Will you ever learn to use it? Can you control it? _He_ can, enough to turn my bones to water and kill like he's crushing ants. Are you ever going to be ready to stand up to that? Even now, I can only think—he will eat you alive, and then turn to the rest of us, when you aren't here to protect us anymore. I'd throw my life away to stop that. But _you_ have to find the strength. Even if I'm still there to put a bullet in his head, even if a bullet in his head is enough to kill him, even if I have the _will _I'll need to shoot him, it's you who has to face him.

That is so much more likely to work out if you're willing to do whatever it takes.

You'd still be Vash then, wouldn't you?

Finally, he flicked the cigarette into the fire. Waste of money, sure, but it did need fuel, and this gave him the smell without smoking it, which he just…didn't feel like doing. "If you think _I'm_ a sacrifice, then you must be one," he told Vash.

Vash raised his eyebrows, shook his head. "Me? No, I—"

"What do you call those scars, Mr. Pacifist?"

"How do you know about those?" yelped Vash.

"Stripped naked, barked like a dog," Wolfwood reminded him. "I was in the saloon. Don't tell me you didn't recognize me?"

"I didn't," admitted Vash. "I wasn't looking. I was trying…"

"To pretend your life never happened. Yeah."

"How did you know where to look?" Vash asked, and Wolfwood felt a slight chill. It was the kind of question Vash wouldn't have asked him an hour ago. Because he'd known the answer might be something he couldn't stand to hear. And because he'd respected Wolfwood's privacy. Lord on high, what had he started?

He was _not_ telling Vash his real age unless it was a matter of life or death.

"I didn't," he admitted. "Not really. I looked everywhere." Vash almost smiled. Very gently, absolutely businesslike, as if he wasn't changing the subject, Wolfwood confided, "I'm not expected to report often, but I let them know I'd found you after that mess in town. If Bernardelli knew, it was probably too late to hide you from him, but after you made that big a fuss in a news magnet like a hijacked steamer it was hopeless." He glared a little. "You just don't know the meaning of a low profile, do you?"

"I _know_ it, I'm just no good at it," grumbled Vash. And, very slowly, he slid his great silver gun back into his pocket, and drew his hand out, and let it lie empty.

Wolfwood blinked. It was almost as if they were still friends. And Vash hadn't asked him for anything, not even an apology. He never seemed to know how to put himself first. Ever. "You really are the saint of stupidity," he informed him, the quasi-immortal gunman with the deep scars who sat just beyond the fire.

"Huh?" said Vash. His forehead crinkled up thoughtfully. "Does your religion even have saints?"

Lord. It was…Vash had forgiven him. Even though he hadn't asked—maybe, you could never be sure with Vash, but maybe _because_ he hadn't asked—Vash had forgiven him. Vash forgave everyone. Except, according to some reports, Legato Bluesummers. Wolfwood wasn't a fraction the nightmare Bluesummers was. Why exactly had he thought he was so special that he alone would be beyond forgiveness?

Wolfwood found that his face had twisted itself into something that was probably a smile. "Vash," he said, "I couldn't define my exact precise religion for you given a month of Sundays, but the Eye of Michael are secret _plant_ worshippers."

And at the little 'o' of embarrassed surprise that froze on Vash's lips and at the sweat that sprung out of nowhere, Wolfwood laughed. He laughed at Vash's positive alarm at the phrase _plant worshipper_ paired with _Wolfwood_, papering over the much more alarming combination of _plant worshippers _and _working for Knives_ behind the hilarity of the strangest racial tension he had ever seen in life or his admittedly limited experience of fiction. He laughed until Vash laughed, too.

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><p>'With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.' ~Abraham Lincoln<p>

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><p>'The Evergreen' is Chapel's Gung Ho Guns title in the anime. I liked it, so I stuck it in our mixed continuity. He has no canonical number. In the manga, Chapel is referred to as 'the man who rings the black funeral bell.' At the time, they're actually referring to Wolfwood, who took over the Chapel seat after shooting the original in a sort of Klingon Promotion. So there's the story title, for anyone who didn't recognize it.<p>

[Edit 4/5: Reloaded with spaces in Wolfwood's middle name so ffdotnet won't strip it out as trash.]

Feed the writer! I really, _**really**_ want to hear your feedback, even if it isn't positive. SirGawain told me chapter one was disgustingly sentimental, and went un-maimed, and we sleep in bedrooms about five feet apart. You'll be safe. And I'll be so happy. ^_^;


	3. The Dream of a Soul Awake

**Who Rings The Black Funeral Bell**

Toll Three: The Dream of a Soul Awake: _Hope Is the Worst of Evils, For It Prolongs the Torment of Man_

Hey, I bet no one expected this story to update! I had hopes for a complex divergent plot, but this is likely to be the end of it. Special thanks to inkydoo and iamfaraway for their awesome reviewing of _both_ previous chapters. (And 'Dark Ichigo Kurosaki,' who wasn't logged in: thanks, I'm touched; this story _is_ full of spoilers but it's about something that didn't actually happen; and as someone once said to me, why are you reading fanfic if you haven't finished the show!)

[Note, all, that the conversation Vash references at the very beginning of this chapter is (the official translation of) the manga version; in the anime the New Oregon feud was over satellite use-rights, since Madhouse Studios removed all the references they could to plants and gengineering. After I finished the anime the first time I was originally under the impression that Vash and Knives were infant space aliens who somehow got onto the SEEDs ship via the airlock. Or possibly minor gods. Space gods?]

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><p>"One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though ... betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope." ~S. Deitz<p>

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><p>"You were messing with me, weren't you?" asked Vash, grinning, after he and Wolfwood had both split the desert silence with their laughter, as they recovered from the hilarity of relief. "When you were talking about the plant they dug up in New Oregon. You wanted to see what I would say."<p>

"Well, Knives would have killed me for saying 'it,'" Wolfwood allowed. "I guess I was testing you. But mostly just messing with you, yeah." And Vash had just looked starry-eyed, moved that the excavated plant was still alive after a hundred years relying on untended systems. Wolfwood's excessively laborious observation that 'it' could produce anything you wanted depending on how you programmed 'it' had gone right by him without stirring a ripple.

He was kind of assuming independent plants need not apply as magic matter machines, or Vash wouldn't practically die of thirst so often.

"'It' is okay, really," said Vash, shrugging. "Don't think they mind. I would say 'she.' They're all girls."

"So why are you not a girl?" Wolfwood peered at him out of suddenly thoughtful eyes. "You're not a girl, are you? Those bulb chicks have really flat chests…"

"I'm a guy!" yelped Vash. "Totally, I swear! And I have no _idea_ why. 'Why' us at all. You know?"

"Eh," agreed Wolfwood, flapping a hand. "Most people have no idea why them."

"Why you?" asked Vash. And it was one of those disconcerting changes of attitude to which he was so prone, his flustered face suddenly all smooth and inquisitive, with his yellow eyebrows pushed up high above abruptly ile-deep green eyes.

Wolfwood shrugged, and really wished he had a cigarette. Needed something to be busy with. His guns needed cleaning, probably, but this situation wasn't quite stable enough yet for that. He patted the breast of his jacket, and pulled out the flat flask of whiskey he had been nursing since the last town. "Me just because. Knives sicced me on you. I sicced me on Knives. The Eye sicced me on the world."

Vash's eyes flickered over the flask as if he wasn't even seeing it. As if Wolfwood had needed any more proof that things weren't really okay, not yet. Vash's drinking problem was even worse than his own. "So how did you…they just took you?"

Wolfwood's expression stretched, half-smirk, half-grimace. Ugh. He had let himself in for this. He'd just have to get through it. "They were churchmen, hey? Told the old lady I had potential. It was totally legal. They even meant it. But it wasn't really preaching talent they were looking for. You," he added, pointing the flask at Vash before beginning to twist the top off. "Dumbass. Are you actually the idiot brother? I've seen Knives do the kind of calculations that maybe four of the biggest university math chumps on the planet could handle without a computer, in his head. Fast." He took a conservative swig of whiskey and tossed the flask underhand to Vash.

Vash caught it automatically, not spilling a drop, and stared at its gleaming face abstractedly. "Yeah…" he acknowledged. "Yeah, I can do that, too." He frowned. "Or I could as a kid. I haven't really tried much in a while, except, you know, bullet vectors, and that's not exactly _math_."

"And what with all the knocks on the head and a hundred years of marinating your brain…" said Wolfwood, nodding toward the flask.

Vash's brow furrowed, and then he suddenly seemed to notice what he was holding and grinned. Took a swallow. "Hey!" he said. "This is good stuff!"

"Sure it is. Watch it, though, I think my salary is cutting off soon."

Vash almost choked on his second gulp. Swallowed it carefully. "Knives has been _paying_ you?"

"Well, _yeah_, Spikey. Mercenary assassins don't come all that cheap, even when you hire them as babysitters. The Eye takes most of it, and I send most of the rest to the old lady, but did you really think I was funding this trip by preaching?"

Vash shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, I always get by. I don't have a job or anything."

"Yeah, well, people give you stuff, because you're your spiky self. That doesn't work for everybody. Neither does killing people," he added judiciously, before realizing it hadn't been the smartest choice of words. He scowled at himself. On the one hand, he didn't want Vash to hate him, but on the other he kept poking at the sore place, prodding Vash with _I'm the enemy, I'm the evil, I'm everything you don't believe in except possibly suicide_, refusing to believe that he had really gotten away with it.

He couldn't possibly have gotten away with it.

He had been so sure of Vash's hatred that this forgiveness was almost offensive in existing.

"It's a specialized profession, you could say," he added. Vash's face had closed up. "Come on, Vash. Give me a hard time about it so I can stop waiting."

"You already know everything I'd say, Wolfwood."

Wolfwood swallowed. So _that_ was it. The other shoe had dropped. Vash had…disowned him. Friends still, maybe, if he didn't keep pushing it. But not Vash's responsibility. Saving the priest who went to extremes had been important. Saving the hit man was apparently too much of a project.

He'd given up on him at last.

"Vash," he said, before realizing that he'd already decided he wasn't going to ask the outlaw to forgive him for the truth, and there was nothing else to say on that score except _give me another chance_. He looked into the sand. "Never mind. Fine. I do know. Stop arguing it if you want. You were driving me crazy anyway. I don't care how good you make it sound, impossible is impossible." _You make impossible things happen_, said his own voice in his head. He had not realized how much he had been counting on Vash and his faith in the impossible.

Wolfwood was the snake in the grass. He betrayed everyone. Somehow. Always. Trying to set just one of those treacheries right had been a stupid idea. A terrible idea. He was much too tangled up in lies to get out of it now.

But for just long enough to destroy everything he'd worked and bled and sacrificed for, he'd hoped. Like an idiot, he'd hoped. _Hope wore a red coat._

They said that those who had never hoped could never despair.

Vash shrugged on the other side of the fire, a ripple of crimson, and Wolfwood hated him. "It's up to you," the gunman said. "It's always been up to you."

Wolfwood grabbed a fistful of sand. The only other thing he might have brought to hand to stabilize himself was his Punisher, and he didn't think he should grab that just now. Shouldn't. Mustn't. Couldn't. "I'm…doing…my…best," he growled. "For the world. For you. I _refuse_ to believe that taking care of my own soul is more important than all those lives."

"That's not—" said Vash. Broke off. Stared at Wolfwood, who raised his head to stare back. "Is that what you think I'm doing?"

Putting himself first. Valuing his own…purity more than the lives he could be saving by dirtying it. "Hell, Spikey," said Wolfwood, "I don't know. I guess I'll wait and see what you do when there are really only two choices." He knew Vash's answer to 'kill or be killed.' The _wrong_ answer. The _stupid _answer. But 'kill or let be killed' was a much, much harder question…for Vash.

For Wolfwood, it had always been easy.

Maybe too easy. It wasn't as if taking the easy way out was a good thing.

But you had to make a choice. Not to choose is also a choice, and usually the wrong one, and life is too short to waste any of it on stupid hesitations.

Even for Vash, time still ran away at the same speed. Even if it didn't quite touch him.

"Tongari," Wolfwood said, the sand trickling away through his fingers as he tightened his fist steadily around the shrinking handful. "In these hundred years…have you really managed to find a third way and save everyone every time? Or have you sometimes let the people you were protecting get killed because you couldn't make the choice?" He glanced up at Vash, whose face was taut. Silent. Narrowed his eyes. "That's what I thought. In fact, I'm starting to believe that's the whole story of your life." He threw away the last of the sand. "Tch. Do you have any idea how many people Knives has killed since you let him get away from you alive?"

"How did you know about that?" Vash asked it so quickly, and in such surprise, that it was Wolfwood's turn to stare.

"Know…what?" He took the bait Vash hadn't meant to cast, pressed at this story like he'd pressed for his lecture a minute ago, sat forward a little because Vash had the data that no one else on the planet carried, that Wolfwood had never had a chance to gather, about what lay behind the blond terror lurking in the shadows of the world. "What happened?"

Vash shook his head. "I almost…the first night after the Fall, after he killed….so many people, I got a big rock, and I almost k-killed him in his sleep. I was so angry. He was so dangerous." His head dropped, he stared at his hands. "But I couldn't. I just…_couldn't_. The spider…and the butterfly…"

"The butterfly?" There were no butterflies on Gunsmoke. There were no _flowers_, not really. And yet the words survived, passed down through the generations along with things like _river_ and _rain_, like _the devil and the deep blue sea._

Vash and his hands kept eye contact, and Wolfwood watched as his…assignment …fished words from somewhere deep in his chest and shared with Wolfwood, actually answered a question for once in his goddamned life. Maybe he thought he owed Wolfwood a few answers. (He owed Wolfwood nothing. He owed Wolfwood everything.) "That's…what he believed. You can't save them both. The spider has to eat, so if you go around freeing butterflies the spiders will starve, even if you don't kill them right there. So you have to kill the spiders if you want to save the butterflies." He shot Wolfwood a smile with not even a pretense of joy in it, and only a flash of humor. "He believes you're all spiders."

Well. That was…that actually made it look like for all his being a crazy genocidal bastard, Knives was saner than Vash.

"But he's wrong," said Vash, and the desperate faith in the words scared Wolfwood down to his bones. "He's wrong. I decided that...so many years ago. People always have the opportunity to change. There's always a way to live without hurting anyone. People have many different ways of thinking, but there's a way…somewhere, there's always a way to save everybody. Knives is wrong. It's wrong to kill people."

And Wolfwood knew then that he would never try to convince Vash to kill again.

Because if Vash became like him, if Vash accepted the role of the demon and began to sacrifice people, it would mean he had sacrificed his faith in humanity. His stupid, vain hope that everyone could live together in peace. His _reason for not being Knives._

"He was kind, you know?" Vash was crying again. "He was…so gentle. He believed more than I ever did that…people would accept us, he _wanted _it more. I was the one who knew it would take work. He said it would be okay because there was no difference in our hearts. So it hurt him so much. And then he became…someone else."

Wolfwood…had never imagined hearing this, and didn't want to. It was easier if Knives was just a monster. He didn't want to consider Knives in pain, Knives breaking, Knives making sacrifices to the greater good the same way that he did. The same as him. The_ same as him. _But information…information was crucial. If Tongari was giving it, he had to get all he could. "What hurt him?" What hurt that terrible creature, that monster, your other half that I sometimes think I see there in place of you when you surprise me? What turned a gentle little monster into _him?_

And is that the real reason you've let him go so far? Because you were children together?

"Tessla," whispered Vash. As if the name might shatter the world by being spoken. This might be hurting him even more than Wolfwood's truth. Even though he'd carried it so long. Who cared? It didn't matter. It didn't _matter._

The truth of Tessla. "The girl who came before us. We found the research notes. The body." Vash closed his eyes. His voice was almost raw, and Wolfwood knew it had been unfair of him to ask, that Vash had never even considered repeating this to anyone, and that he should probably be grateful or humble or relieved or even annoyed, but he just felt so cold. "They…cut her, and tested her, and tested her, until she got so many cancers, and then they dissected her body once she died. She learned to _talk,_ but they didn't stop. She wasn't even a year old. That's why Rem hid us. She protected us." He shook himself out of his reverie, looked up at Wolfwood. "I can't choose again," he said. "We almost chose to die, after we found her, found the body in its pieces, but Rem stopped us. Stopped me twice. Knives chose to kill. I chose…to believe in Rem. Believe in people. I _can't _choose again."

"Why?" asked Wolfwood. His voice cracking slightly. Vash blinked. "Why?" he demanded again. "Why do you believe in us? It was humans who carved all those scars into you, wasn't it? For taking away our prey, or for the bounty on your head, or out of stupid fear…why would you ever fight for us?"

Vash bit his lip. "Because…Rem. Because I…I can't see people be hurt…I have to." He closed his eyes. "Even when I was Eriks, and making myself do nothing about that gang because I didn't think I could do enough and if I did I'd have to give Lena and grandma up, you saw, I couldn't let…anything happen in front of me."

"'Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it,'" quoted Wolfwood quietly. He grinned when Vash glanced up at him. "Proverbs 3:27. So you're okay there. You're a complete soft touch. You never don't help. But all it takes to help evil is to do nothing against it. You really need to decide what to do about Knives."

Yes, it was awful of him. Putting responsibility back on Vash after _that_. But it was a responsibility he'd been dodging for decades, and Wolfwood hadn't been able to take it anymore, the weight of the thin desert air around them. Maybe some people could have made it better, somehow, or hugged their broken monster friend who they'd betrayed just like they did everyone else, or kept drawing out the poison until they both reached some kind of miracle freedom point, but he'd just reminded Vash that he was the good guy and cut out. It had to be enough.

The air was breathable again.

Vash sighed. Stared a long time up at the stars. At last he asked, "can you take me to him?"

"Yeah," Wolfwood admitted. "I can. But we won't win. He has too many Guns left."

Vash looked sharply at him. "Are you saying I should wait to meet Knives until he's killed off all his own helpers for me?"

"Pretty much," Wolfwood admitted. Damn it, 'frontal assault' was actually a pretty Spikey plan, now that he thought about it, but not quite the mad brilliance he'd been hoping for when he'd shared all.

But then, Vash was a tactician, not a strategist. "He's still got Ninelives, Gauntlet, Beast, Hornfreak, and the Puppetmaster in reserve, along with whoever else the Eye has assigned to him. And there's supposed to be a hidden Thirteenth somewhere, stronger than anyone, the Crimson Nail. I can take between one and two of those guys at once. Possibly three if I just have to keep them busy and I'm not needed later. I don't think you can handle the rest on your own. With Legato there. And Knives."

"Well," said Vash after a moment. "He's down by Chapel at least."

Wolfwood snorted, meaning to say something about when optimism became stupidity, but then something about the look on Vash's face…. "Tongari, no. No, that is not going to work. You can't just convince his subordinates that they should stop attacking you for the good of the world. They knew what they were joining. They don't care about the world. For the chance to kill more and become stronger they traded away their 'humanity.' And most of them know they're dead men walking. Knives doesn't let go until he kills you. You have _nothing_ to offer them." He caught himself; he'd said too much; hopefully the stuff directly hammering in the point had been emphatic enough that Vash would pass over the pieces Wolfwood should have let lie.

"So why are you here?" his friend asked.

Better than it could have been. But not good. Personal. Too damn personal. The walls were all falling down and he'd never be safe again. (Not that he was ever safe, but an hour ago he'd still thought this at least would never happen. Vash would never _see_ him.) He had an answer ready, though. A _true _one. "Because _I_ 'knew' I was joining a genocide society to kill its leader. Plus, I'm kind of a fringe member. Never hung around headquarters "

"You are not a dead man walking."

Damn. He caught it. "Save it. What I want to make sure of is that the kids aren't goners."

Vash shifted. "Do you know why every member of the Gung-Ho Guns joined?"

Wolfwood frowned. He wished. "No. No, I don't know much. I've met most of them. They know I'm always late to things. I know what they look like. It's not a close working environment."

"So how do you know it won't work? You might not even be the only infiltrator."

Wolfwood saw the arrayed demons of Knives' entourage in his mind, and bit down on his cigarette hard. "Stop dreaming, Spikey."

"Why?" asked Vash brightly. "Dreaming is important. Think, in fifteen years maybe I'll be stopping by your orphanage. I'll be outside helping some of the kids re-paint the picket fence white, and you'll be sitting inside teaching some of the little ones to read."

I'll be lying inside _embalmed_ more likely, Wolfwood thought. And almost said it, and added, _this body of mine isn't going to take me to forty. I'm the exact fucking opposite of you. _

But he didn't. He smiled a little. He said, "yeah. That'll be nice." Because there were only so many times he could blast the smile off Vash's face before it came to mind that puppy-kicking had never really been one of his hobbies. Apocalyptic puppy more so. Vash wanted to talk about a future for him? He should be allowed to. And if you ignored the fact of Knives and the Gung-Ho Guns and the Eye, he _might_ be around in fifteen years. He'd be an old man by then, an old man in his early thirties, and he hated the idea of that a little less if the old-man him was leaning over a school table teaching an orphan girl to read.

It did not escape his notice, or his amusement, that Vash's imagination had settled fifteen-years-on Wolfwood down, but not himself. Maybe after a hundred years of wandering around, he couldn't really imagine himself living any other way, even if he was free to.

Or maybe, Wolfwood thought, Lina and her grandmother impinging guiltily on his mind, it just hurt too much to think about it right now.

Actually, he'd thought Vash never thought about the future—_he doesn't_, Wolfwood thought suddenly, looking at his crazy friend's bright smile; fake, obviously, but this time even faker than he'd realized. He wanted Wolfwood to look toward the future. He wasn't making any effort for himself.

Manipulative bastard.

"You'll take care of the kids for me?" he asked. "Once I'm gone." He held up a hand. "Upupup. No. Saying we do this thing, make it work, I probably won't make it out, and if I do you'll still outlive me. So. I'm going to leave some kids behind. You'll make sure they're okay for me?"

"Wolfwood—" Vash wasn't smiling anymore.

"Will you do that for me, Vash? Promise?"

"I am _not_ going to let you die." And that was unexpectedly serious, so serious Wolfwood was sitting with gunman and outlaw and inhuman power, not the broom-headed idiot walking disaster area, and he wondered if Vash knew how like Knives he looked when he did that. (Felt nothing like, except for the rush of power against his face, which was like what Knives had pumped out constantly all of the two times they'd met.)

He set his teeth against the force of it. "Don't be stupid. Everybody dies." Except, just maybe, you. And your brother. A hundred years young.

If you can just dodge the bullets long enough.

"Yes. Maybe. I guess. But you aren't going to die to this, Wolfwood. I'm not going to let you."

"I'm not who you should be protecting," growled Wolfwood, anxious that Vash not stake too much of his own peace of mind on Wolfwood's survival, because he, Wolfwood, couldn't fight at his best if he had to bear in mind that Vash would be undermined if he fell. And then…_oh_. Vash knew that. Knew that Wolfwood was counting on Vash's power and wanted him fighting at maximum efficiency, and was using that to pressure Wolfwood into protecting himself. Vash was turning his own little manipulation with the hostage children back on him. The devious little sandworm.

He was also completely sincere.

Hmph. So now Wolfwood had to choose his death carefully. The only acceptable ones were now those in contexts where Vash would get angry about it instead of sad. Terrific.

(It looked like Vash really would mourn him. He had always kind of wished somebody would, and known he'd burned too many bridges, but dammit, Vash thought he was ten years older than he really was and expected him to have a normal human life span and this was so damn stupid.)

Way to trap him. The Eye and Knives considered his death their possession, as well. Practically everyone did.

"You aren't the boss of me, Tongari." And Vash grimaced acknowledgement of this in such a way that Wolfwood realized he'd connected the word 'boss' with 'Knives,' who was technically his _employer_, but no need to get into the detailed conventions of the assassin business life. "I control my own death."

He didn't give Vash time to respond to that, but stood up with a hiss. "I don't know about you, but I was wiped out before we started talking. I'm going to sleep." He retrieved a blanket from the saddlebags, wrapped himself in it, and lay down with his back to the fire, and to Vash. His face to his cross-Punisher, and the cool, parched night wind. After a moment, he heard Vash draw his own traveling blanket from his duffel, and settle at the base of the stone.

The priest lay there listening to the fire burn down and smelling the last remnants of his cigarette char away, his hands with their invisible bloodstains folded against his chest only inches from his weapon, and had begun to fall asleep already when he heard Vash say softly, "G'night, Wolfwood."

Wolfwood smiled into the darkness. "Yeah, ya moron," he replied. "You too."

* * *

><p>And that ends the original scene.<p>

As you may have noticed, chapters one, two, and three could easily have respectively been titled _Thought_,_ Laughter_, and _Hope_. If there is a Chapter Four it will be called 'Whence Then Evil: _All Things Truly Wicked Start from an Innocence_.' It is much more likely to come about if you give me lots of feedback about what you would like to see happen from here, and/or feedback generally so I know it's worth the effort of threshing out.

Also known as, pretty please review! (Especially if you have the story on alert and haven't said anything yet, since you ten must see something worthwhile about it, and I wanna know what.)

"It's all one thing - both tend into one scope -  
>To live upon Tobacco and on Hope,<br>The one's but smoke…the other is but wind…"  
>~Sir Robert Aytoun of Kincaldie, <em>Sonnet on Tobacco<em>


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